Morning, afternoon, evening, night
by writerfan2013
Summary: Four quick slices of Musketeer life showing each at a time of day. Morning: Aramis wakens alone. Afternoon: D'Artagnan worries about Constance. Evening: Porthos' true family. Night: Athos and Ninon.
1. Morning

It was morning. He knew that first. The ground was frosted and mist clung to the trees. Then came the pain, and a sense of his head coming apart, his soul struggling, his world seeping through the strips of his shirt which bound his forehead.

He sat, groaning in pain. Mist billowed and dissipated in front of his eyes, partly the forest's early breath, partly the confusion which weighted his mind like sacks piled against a siege door. He saw men on the ground in impossible attitudes. Blue cloaks had been trampled black into the mud. The white of throats and shirts was striped with crimson.

Aramis saw movement and reached for his sword, the motion halted by the destruction in his broken shoulder. But it was just Marsac, stumbling away from Aramis, crying out at a different pain that Aramis was only beginning to comprehend. Their friends, their colleagues, their brothers were dead.

Aramis stood, grasped a tree trunk, hailed Marsac, knew that Marsac was beyond recall. The man was ripping away his doublet, his musket belt, even his sword, and casting them into the dirt. His cloak was already gone.

"Wait!"

But Marsac would not. Snow and sorrow reflected in his wild eyes. "We have been betrayed. How can I live when my brothers are all dead?"

"I'm not dead," said Aramis. "You saved my life, Marsac, stop, think."

Marsac shook his head. "I will find who did this. How did they know we werre here, how dare they slaughter us as we slept? I will end them."

Aramis reached across the swirling void to his friend, but Marsac flinched, and staggered away, and Aramis was alone.

He sank to the ground, not caring that it was cold and wet. All around him lay the fallen remains of his troop. He ought to find a sword, get up, seek help, find the captain and call down the wrath of the King on this cowardly treachery.

He sat. Time passed, and Marsac did not return.

Aramis touched his head with wary fingers. It was nothing. A glancing blow. Body and soul were still joined. "Get up. Get up!"

He stood, swaying, and took the first step out of the clearing. Another step, past the slack faces of his comrades. Another step, his head throbbing, and onward.

He was a musketeer. There was still life, and honour, and in time there would be vengeance. With each new step he vowed it.

Blood and grime ran down his cheek and carried away his tears.


	2. Afternoon

Afternoon in Paris gave no relief from the city's endless din: cocks crowed, shutters banged, sheep bleated as they were herded through the stinking streets to market, wagons rumbled and creaked along the rutted lanes.

But there was also pale sunlight, a breeze from beyond the city gate, and a fair face resting in the pillow beside him, smiling at him even while she slept.

D'Artagnan propped himself on one elbow and stroked Constance's hair from her white forehead.

Her white undershirt slipped from her shoulder. Creamy skin drew his eye, and then his hand, along her arm and onto her collarbone. He pressed his lips to the dip between shoulder and neck, and murmureted "I love you."

She opened her eyes at once and said, "The time!" She hauled the covers up around her, scrabbling to rise.

D'Artagnan wrapped his arms around her and drew her back down into his bed, pressing her to his bare chest. "The clock at St Martin has not yet struck two."

"He'll be back, he'll know -"

She escaped his embrace and jumped off the bed, pulling her petticoats down, smoothing away all trace of the passion with which they had staggered from the kitchen, up the crooked stair and into his room, she tearing open his shirt like a surgeon seeking a desperate hurt, he responding to her kiss with breathless urgency.

"Constance -"

"I have to go, I'm sorry-"

He caught at her hand but she just wriggled free and ran away. Her footsteps clattered on the stair like so many strikes on an anvil, forging his heart into a new shape.

D'Artagnan sat on the edge of the bed. The room smelled of her rosewater, and his sheets were damp, but there was no other sign that a beautiful woman had lain here, had allowed him -

No. She had not allowed. She had demanded. And he had given, given it all, laboured to please her and to show her that from the first moment she came into his arms, she was his world.

But now she was gone and he was bereft.

"How do you do it?" he asked Aramis during supper at the barracks. "How do you love a woman and then let her go?" He paused as the three musketeers looked enquiringly at him. He had never mentioned any lovers to them. "I mean, as a point of general interest?"

Porthos snorted and plucked a hunk of meat from the platter loaded with a chicken, a haunch of ham, and two fine rabbits. Aramis wiped his knife on a handkerchief and split an apple with it. "You never let a woman go," Aramis said. "No one you've ever known is really gone. Not from your heart."

Porthos' expression sobered. He nodded, and punched Aramis' shoulder.

Athos levered himself from the post where he lounged, listening to this exchange. "As a point of general interest -" D'Artagnan rolled his eyes "- do you want to marry her?"

"I can't marry her," D'Artagnan admitted.

Athos gave a quirk of his mouth."Then whether you let her go or not, you cannot keep her, and the question becomes moot."

D'Artagnan frowned.

"People disappear," said Athos. "It is a part of life, especially a soldier's life."

"Athos has a melancholy soul," said Aramis to D'Artagnan. "Everyone I ever loved is still here." He smacked his hand on the breast of his leather doublet as he made this declaration.

"It must be rather crowded," observed Athos.

Aramis pointed at him with his knife, a slice of apple speared on the end. "You jest, but I have friends as well as mistresses in my heart." He gestured around at his comrades.

Athos smiled, and lifted his wine cup in acknowledgement.

Aramis turned to D'Artagnan. "Keep this lady in your heart. If she likes you, she'll let you know when your attentions are required."

"But I -" D'Artagnan stopped.

Aramis clapped him on the shoulder."You're young. You have no money. Your prospects are precarious -"

"-Thanks -"

"-And so should a woman deign to invite you to her bed, your only task is to appear honoured and grateful and to make her as happy as you can." Aramis bit the apple and looked pointedly at D'Artagnan for agreement.

"Yeah, gratitude," said Porthos. "They love gratitude."

Aramis hushed him. To D'Artagnan he said, "Just let her know that her affection would be the biggest favour you could hope for. She'll come round."

D'Artagnan sighed.

But after dinner that night, as her husband sat by the fire reading his order book and she bustled about tidying away the dishes, Constance came and stood beside D'Artagnan's chair, and put her hand on his bare wrist, tucking her fingertips up inside his sleeve.

He looked up into her face and saw merriment, and affection.

"That shirt is a disgrace," she said. "The lace is in tatters, and the cuffs are in a right state."

"I'm sorry," D'Artagnan said. "I'll have it mended -"

"Don't be ridiculous. Bring it to me tomorrow afternoon and I'll do it." She frowned sternly, but her skin was warm and soft against his inside the tattered cuff.

"Thank you," he said, as behind them her husband grunted at his ledger. "Please know that I truly appreciate everything you do for me."

"So you should," said Constance, and smiled, and D'Artagnan's heart was full.


	3. Evening

Charon was dead, and if he wished it he, Porthos could be king.

In the twilight, with lamps gleaming from their muddied glasses, and an evening breeze wafting the street awnings like the sails of a ship laden with bounty from the colonies, it seemed possible.

But the Court of Miracles was nothing but an illusion of hope for the souls who scuttled there. It cured the lame and the blind as they carried their begging bowls under its archway, it offered a tainted chance to those condemned by circumstance or birth, but it held no future for a man who had known honour.

"Stay," said Flea. Her feathered dress rustled as she walked, a sound of seabird wings following the ship, hoping for food. "You and me, we can make this place ours."

"I have a family now," Porthos said. He thought of fierce Aramis, open-hearted D'Artagnan and the calm bravery of Athos. "I won't leave them."

"Aren't I family too?" She turned her little pointed face up to his, and pressed herself against his breast. She smelled of sugar, and candlesmoke. "What we shared, doesn't that mean something?"

He winced. "Yes. But I made a promise."

"Not to me," she said. She sighed, and stepped away. "Come on then, it'll be dark soon." She took his hand and led him through the secret paths to the edge of the Court of Miracles, the unmapped heart of Paris where dreams mingled with nightmares, and money and love were equally the prey of thieves.

"This is it, then," she said.

"Come with me this time," he offered. "We could - I would marry you. If you want."

"Marriage! What do I want with marriage? I couldn't live in your world, Porthos. I wouldn't last one day among all your great ladies and gents."

"They're not so great. And I would do it, for you."

She shook her head. "I'll never leave. This is my home, for all time."

It pained him to have to tell her. "It won't last forever, Flea. It can't."

"Then for as long as it does. Farewell, Porthos."

She kissed him, and he tasted wine, stolen chocolate, and her strange, stubborn innocence.

"You know I still love you," he said.

"I know," she said, dancing away.

His friends were waiting.

He sighed, and put his hand to his hip. And found his purse gone.

He smiled and shook his head. She was a thief still, and he alone had grown honourable, as things were measured in his world. Even if she went with him, donned a respectable woman's clothes, occupied herself with cooking and needlework, beneath the cloth, inside her porcelain skin she would always be here, in a filthy alley, lifting his purse and laughing at the arrogant idiocy of those less poor than herself. He could love her, here in the permanent half-light of these labyrinth streets, but he could not bring what he loved into the day.

Another miracle, then, that by this proof of her unchanged nature, she was allowing him to walk away, be himself once more, and know a soldier's honour.

"Goodbye," he called, and turned to join his brethren.


	4. Night

"I know nothing of you."

He inclined his head, acknowledging the right of this. Beyond their inn, night pressed heavily on the earth, blackness covering all, forest or stone, countess or musketeer.

"Not even your true name," she said, "although I can guess."

"Do not guess," he said at once. "I beg you, leave my name to its obscurity. It is all that it deserves."

"As you wish."

She hesitated still, though, pacing about the inn's small room, and picking up sundry items from its mantel to inspect in the glow of the fire, shrug over, and replace.

Athos watched, standing solidly beside the shuttered window. Outside, the rain which had followed them two days from Paris continued to spatter the walls and drip from tile to gutter to calf-deep mud of the inn's little courtyard. In the darkness it could only be heard, ticking with the inevitability of the church clock which had chimed eleven as they entered the hamlet, drenched, Ninon hunched on her wagon, Athos cloaked and sodden on his horse.

The Countess turned, approached, motioned restlessly with her hands, and retreated to the fire. Water still clung to her shoes and the first foot of her hem, changing the dress's plain cotton from oatmeal colour to gruel.

"There is no commitment to this path," said Athos. "It was only a suggestion, to turn a little aside from our route and shelter together. I can easily sleep with the horses and the carter."

"No," she said.

"I am not new to hay," he said with an ironic smile. "Musketeers are not well paid."

She sighed. "I must accustom myself to a similar level. Friendless and poor, a simple life must be my choice."

"Even poverty and solitude are not always simple," said Athos. He gazed into her face, seeing privilege and pride, but also sweetness and sincerity. Her principles were admirable. She did not understand the depths to which her new life would sink her. Even if she had, he did not believe she would be daunted.

Her life was as ruined as his own, but unlike him, she was blameless. She could begin afresh, with a clear gaze and no dread of the silence of midnight with its memories and recriminations clutching at him like white hands thrust between the bars of a leper ship..

He did not envy Ninon her fall, for it was a hard one. But she was free, in a way he could barely recall. "So am I to seek out the stable and rest my head in a stall?"

She laughed, and came to lay her hand on his leather sleeve. "No, Athos. We will share a bed, as we agreed."

He smiled, but did not move.

"I thought you would kiss me," she said.

Her fingers on his arm were slender and pale. Her hair still kept a little of its lavender scent, the smell of the southern hills, acres of blue haze, the heat rising above red tiled roofs and the thin spires of church and tree. Olives and oranges bowed the trees, and in the distance shimmered the sea, and freedom. "We are downstairs. The host may return."

"And see a cavalier embracing a common woman of no consequence." She looked up at him, her eyes sparkling in the firelight. "I never thought you timid, Athos."

Instantly he drew her to him and pressed his mouth to hers. She gasped, but before she could respond he let her go, saying, "I remain at your service."

She heard the dry humour in his voice. He was not dour, this calm and silent man, only reserved, and hiding an old sorrow. Well, she could nor help that, but now she knew that his reserve was only one aspect of him.

She raised her face and kissed his neck, between the lace trimming his shirt collar, and the soft curl of his beard. He smelled of rain, and Armagnac. "Light a candle," she said, "and let us go upstairs, or we will spend all night talking and find it dawn outside."

Athos immediately lit a candle from the fire, and called to the host that they were retiring.

The chamber was beneath the roof, with a sloping floor. But there was a bed, and dry linen, and a bowl of water on a chest.

Above their heads, rain struck the tiles, and filled the night with energetic sound.

Ninon unfastened Athos' doublet, and he shrugged it away. She put her hand on the hilt of his sword and he unhooked it from its belt and lay it on the floor beside the bed "It is never far from me," he said.

"I am not very dangerous."

He allowed her to remove his neckerchief, and open the collar of his shirt, amused at how she took the lead. "You are fearless," he said.

"We have spoken plainly of our intention. What reason is there to hesitate?" She moved to press her body close to him.

"Ah," he said, sliding his arms, at last, around her. "Perhaps for morality."

"You don't care about morals."

He frowned - she had spoken amiss, clearly, but said, "Then perhaps for romance."

"Romance! Is this an ancient scene, the knight and his lady?"

"It requires daring and passion on each side." His fingers found the stays on her bodice. Her petticoats were silk and lace. Athos smiled, running his hands over her back. "Be careful with your future lovers," he said. "They may not expect such riches."

"You are the last," she told him. "Without wealth I must protect my honour."

"If my duty were not to the King -"

"Hush. We could never marry."

"No," and a bitter shadow crossed his face, "but I could ensure your safety, and that of - children."

She laughed, and undid her bodice. He drew breath in sharply as she revealed ivory skin, then sighed as he found it warm and soft to his lips. "Children! Not even, a child. You are bold."

"I am practical."

"Well," she said. "Prove your courage, Athos of the musketeers." In the dim glow of their candle, she slid her petticoat to the floor. She reached out her hand to snuff the light.

"Let the candle stay," he said. "It is better that we see each other."

"All right." She waited for him to tell her, as other men had, that she was beautiful, but he only stared, his blue eyes steady, assured, and it was she who said, "You are more handsome by candlelight even than I had imagined."

He moved swiftly then and scooped her up, lifted her to the bed. Her hair was silken over the back of his hands, like the cloth, from Persia, like the breath of a queen. Her touch - her lips on his shoulder, her legs entwining with his - was a bright blessing, the return of youth for this one night, the return of hopes, dreams, life. She drew him close and whispered his name, his new name, and for the first time it carried no sting. He closed his eyes, his cheek on her breast, and breathed in her glow.

He was as passionate as she had hoped. His intensity carried her with him, but although he had a soldier's hard strength, his hands were gentle. When he opened his eyes she saw tenderness, and he held her as long as she wished it.

"I have to go," he said as the candle guttered down at last. "If I lie here with you until dawn I may be tempted never to leave."

She splayed her hand on his chest, feeling his heart beat with a martial rhythm. There was nothing more to say or do. He dressed, his eyes on her as he pulled on doublet, scarf, boots, sword, pistols. He picked up his hat, and on an impulse plucked from it the plume and lay it in her lap. He bowed, turned on his heel and left her.

He did not go directly to the stable where the waggoner and horses slept, but paced the lane around the inn, relishing the damp air of a night which has rained all it can, and is now empty, awaiting new clouds in fresh skies. A narrow moon flickered between the remnants of cloud. Dawn would be in an hour, but until then, the inn, and the forest, were dark. For once Athos did not feel the dread which had followed him through the long years. The darkness was just darkness, and he had known some brief moments of light and love.

He strode away and the night covered him.

* * *

**Author's note**: I hope you liked this short fic! I thought of it suddenly Sunday morning whilst away for the weekend with my best friend, and wrote most of it on the train home. Let me know if you would like more in a similar vein...and thanks for reviewing. -Sef


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